Empty the Bench

- Pick one: Bo Jackson, Barry Sanders, or the entire Houston Oilers receiving corps. It’d be pretty sweet if the good folks who are bringing back Tecmo Bowl (!!) incorporated all the Tecmo stars of yesteryear into some sort of archives, but I’ll just say “fat chance” to those hopes. Whether or not this incantation of the Nintendo game (which gave guys now aged 25 - 34 calloused thumbs for years) turns out to be any good remains to be seen. For the record, my ETB associate Andrew maintains that no one–NO ONE–can beat him. Question: does that include games with the “you can’t control the nose tackle” rule in effect?

- The Big Picture gets all Being John Malkovich in a wide-ranging interview with True Hoop’s Henry Abbott, where the ace NBA blogger dishes on his work habits, how he ended up under the ESPN umbrella, and his prediction for NBA Finals champ.

- Stop Mike Lupica has a lengthy diatribe about the possibility of Jermaine O’Neal ending up in a Knicks uniform next season. Personally, I don’t think O’Neal has proven himself to be a franchise cornerstone during his tenure with the Pacers, but for some reason, I like the guy’s game and think he would flourish on a team that wouldn’t rely on him to put up 25 and 10 night in, night out. Health issues for sure, but his shot-blocking abilities would pair well with Eddy Curry. Isiah, you know you want to move Channing Frye…

- Next time your high-school track coach invites you over for an athletic massage, and you feel something warm running down your back, don’t assume that it’s just massage oil.

- 464 MLB players were asked who the friendliest guy in the league is. No one was allowed to vote for a teammate (or presumably for themselves, Barry Bonds), and when the final results were tallied up, no single player earned more than 7% of the vote–except for the winner. Representing Motown as the starting first baseman for the Detroit Tigers, we give you Sean Casey, who received a whopping 46% of the vote.

- Um… honestly, you can fill in your own joke.

- Bugs & Cranks has our favorite baseball article of the day, and it’s not just because they reminded us of that infamous, sought-after-and-now-forgotten Billy Ripken Fleer card with “fuck face” scrawled across the bat handle. For their Worst Team Ever, they’ve assembled a truly moribund roster of big-leaguers who sucked and big-leaguers who were even suckier. Nice work gentlemen.

- Antonio McDyess really, really wants a NBA championship ring. Dice, I strongly urge you to do your part in making that happen by registering a double-double this evening against those upstart Bulls.

- Speaking of the Pistons/Bulls series, memo to whichever three gentlemen are officiating the game tonight: let them play. Let both teams play their respective games and let the chips fall where they may. Don’t whistle the ticky-tack flops and don’t let free throws decide the game.

- One writer sounds like he’s about to pull out all his f*@ing hair if he sees one more f!*king flop by f%#king Kurt f*%king Thomas! Here’s why: “It’s the screen where Nash takes a step-back dribble away from the screen and the defender rolls around Thomas and he invariably sticks his behind out to give Nash that split-second extra to beat his defender off the dribble. Thomas must be the butt of Phoenix film session jokes and endless practice court imitations.”

- Have you checked out and joined Ballhype yet? To quote Dutch, from Predator: “Do it! Do it now! I’m here!”

- The announcement of an all-new Tecmo Bowl got us feeling all nostalgic about back in the day when you’d sleep over at your friend’s house and stay up until 4am, blowing the dust out of the Nintendo over and over and over. To bring it all home, here’s this incredible homage to those long gone days. Unless you’re a huge Weezer fan, we recommend turning the sound down a little bit. Awesome.